Shenzhen was rated as a fast-growing city among six bay areas around the world, according to a research report on world bay areas’ development index recently released by the Shenzhen Academy of Social Sciences.
The report suggested that Shenzhen exceled in industrial agglomeration, growth speed and infrastructure support. Moreover, the city is playing a bigger role as an international shipping hub.
The study researched on 10 selected bay area core cities.
The populations of the 10 cities accounted for 49 percent of the total population of the six bay areas, while their GDP took up 64 percent of the bay areas’ overall economies, according to Shenzhen Special Zone Daily.
The report took six aspects – development scale, quality, openness levels, support potential and sustainability —into consideration in forming a system that helps analyze these cities’ development index.
Tokyo led the pack, followed by New York, London, Hong Kong, San Jose, San Francisco, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Sydney and Macao. Shenzhen and Guangzhou were both listed as fast-developing bay area cities.
Shenzhen’s comprehensive score ranked seventh, with its score close to the scores of the fifth and sixth places. However, more efforts are still needed to improve development potentials in academic degree structure and higher education, sustainability, quality of per capita GDP and openness in international exchanges and talents, according to the report.
The report also stated that most of the world’s most important cities are port cities such as New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore, featuring high-level talents, advanced science and technology, financial capitals and creatives.
However, according to the research team, the report reflected the situations before the COVID-19 pandemic and next year’s report will present the pandemic’s impact on the development of bay areas around the world.